


Unfinished Parts

by joss80



Category: NCIS
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 14:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6758692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joss80/pseuds/joss80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Tony and Gibbs return from an undercover case together, team members confront them with what they see as a blatant, romantic relationship with each other... only nothing has ever happened between the two men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfinished Parts

**Author's Note:**

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> This was written for the LJ Reverse Bang Challenge, in response to the amazing artwork (as seen above) and suggested story guidleline by rose_malmaison
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**Unfinished Parts**

He hesitated at his front door, his fingers itching to pick up the sheaf of sheet music that was sitting on top of his piano.

Going to work today was going to be different. It was about 9 hours earlier in the day than his work shift of the past four weeks, and about a 9 hour’s drive closer from the commute he’d become used to. Sure, he’d still get to see Gibbs, but the past month had thrown him so out of routine that the new normal – or what was now the old new normal - was now one that he actually preferred.

With one last, longing look back into his living room, Tony DiNozzo closed the door behind him and ran for the elevator.

* * * * *

“Hey, piano man!” Tim’s greeting rang out across the squad room, and Ziva’s head popped up from behind the divider before Tony had taken more than four steps into the bullpen.

He knew his smile mirrored theirs - this little NCIS family reunion was a long time in the making – and he strode forward with determination and an unusual feeling of well-being.

Home. It felt like home, like coming back to something familiar after a long and wonderful vacation. Except he and Gibbs hadn’t been on vacation. He’d been tickling the ivories at a swanky members-only piano bar in Savannah, Georgia, while Gibbs played hot-but-reserved bartender-cum-bouncer opposite him. They’d been running surreptitious surveillance on several businessmen suspected of blackmail and robbery in a NCIS drug bust gone bad, and the NCIS teams in the Southeast had needed and pleaded for a dynamic duo (as Tony liked to think of himself and Gibbs) who were completely unknown and unrecognizable in the region.

Vance had bitten a toothpick clean in half when the call and approval from SecNav had come in, and Tony and Gibbs had been headed down the coast a few days later with fake IDs, cover stories, and new jobs in place.

And now they were back, and there were hugs to give out.

He dropped his go bag next to his desk and did a 180, enveloping a surprised Ziva in a heartfelt embrace.

“Zee!” he mouthed fondly against her curly hair, as her smaller-but-strong frame remained stiff against his larger one. He pulled back after a few seconds and appraised her. “How’ve you been?”

Her eyebrows were already raised at him, the familiar attitude and expression a welcome reprieve from the women he’d encountered that past month who had been nothing but obsequious and shallow.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she teased with a frown, pulling away and sitting down before he could bug her anymore. “Actually, let me catch you up,” she said in an apparent change of heart before he caught the mischievous smile plastered on her face. “There are 14 reports on your desk. Happy reading.”

Finding himself summarily dismissed, but not taking it to heart one bit, Tony turn around to approach Tim.

“Probie-Wan. I’ve missed you.”

The smile on Tim’s face was genuine as Tony patted his back and peered over his shoulder to look at the computer monitor.

“Time’s a-wastin’, DiNozzo!”

Tony’s head shot up to gaze across the few feet to Gibbs’ desk, where the man himself sat with a not-often seen smile gracing his face. Tony was across the gap in a matter of two seconds, and Gibbs rose to greet him with an equally-matched hug. 

“How’re you doing?” Tony asked against his ear, and Gibbs murmured back something about not sleeping well under the boat anymore, and then they were pulling apart and grinning at each other like mad things and Tony caught but ignored McGee’s open-mouthed look of shock to his left.

Gibbs’ blue eyes were blazing with emotion as they watched Tony, and Tony found himself blushing without any trigger other than the intense gaze.

“You forget how to tie a tie over the past 24 hours?” he asked, dropping his gaze to Gibbs’ neck as his hands rose to straighten and adjust the striped accessory. “There, much better.” And he patted Gibbs’ chest, smiled up at him once more, and swept back to his desk.

He was thrilled to find that his chair hadn’t been moved and was still at the same height, perfect for one Anthony DiNozzo Jr and nobody else. Then he noticed the stack of case files on his desk and let out a loud groan.

“Nice welcome back pres-” he started, but he stopped speaking mid-sentence as he looked across and caught the perplexed expression on Ziva’s face. “What?”

Ziva’s eyes darted towards Gibbs’ desk before meeting Tony’s again.

“Nothing,” she said with a casual shrug of her shoulders, and a tight-lipped smile of the sort that he never saw on her face unless she was plotting something.

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. “Yeah right,” he mumbled under his breath, as he lowered his eyes and flipped open the top folder in front of him to begin perusing the case-related information.

He distantly heard Gibbs’ phone ring, and a small smile stole onto his face as he thought about how seldom he’d heard that noise in the past few weeks. Cell phones had been banned in the piano lounge, and the only noise had been that coming from the ivories beneath his fingers and the occasional sound of ice cubes being shaken as Gibbs made a martini across the room from him.

His smile deepened as he thought back on the Gibbs that he’d become accustomed to – relaxed, outgoing, flirty even, and a surprisingly mean mixologist after only two days’ worth of lessons. Their apartments had been close to each other, and they’d spent their days lounging on the beach and their nights as eagle-eyed –

“TONY!”

He snapped to attention, almost head-butting McGee in the process. Then he noticed that Tim wasn’t the only one invading his personal space. Ziva had perched her cute little Israeli butt on his desk, and was leaning in closely.

“Wha – uh, where’s Gibbs?” he asked, still trying to escape from his daydream haze.

“With Abby,” Ziva replied, looking smug. “Did you not hear his phone ring?”

“Actually,” Tim interjected before Tony could respond, and Tony turned his head almost helplessly at the apparent tag-team that was happening in front of him, “I believe that Tony zoned off into La-la-land right about the time that Gibbs’ phone rang.”

“Explain!” Ziva demanded suddenly, as she slapped a hand down on the desk between them.

Tony jumped again, this time to his feet as he regained his composure somewhat.

“What is _with_ you people?” he complained, as much to get them to back off as to buy himself a few more seconds. “Sheesh!” 

“You come back from an under-cover all happy and relaxed, and Gibbs is all happy and relaxed,” Tim noted.

“Which is something we have not seen before,” Ziva interjected.

“And then you and Gibbs are all huggy and making… _googly eyes_ at each other,” Tim huffed out, “and Tony, you straightened his tie.”

Tony raised his eyebrows at his teammate. “I was undercover with the guy for a month, McReading-Too-Much-Into-Things. We bonded, a real bromance if you will. He’s a lot of fun once you peel back the ten thousand layers of baggage.”

“We are not buying it,” Ziva declared, her mouth set in a firm line. “You and Gibbs have been friends for years. Something has shifted. Some funky monkey has been going on.”

“There’s no hanky panky about it, Ziva,” Tony replied, not even missing a beat. “We’re not together, have never been together, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I’m still not buying it,” Tim stated with a shrug of his shoulders. “I know what I saw this morning, and that was beyond any bromance I’ve ever seen.” He turned to go back to his desk. “Say what you want, Tony,” he noted, by way of departure, “and we’ll just wait for you to fess up.”

Tony’s mouth was wide open as he turned back to Ziva, who was giving him a coy look. 

“Body language,” she whispered across at him, before sliding off of his desk and sashaying provocatively over to her own. “It does not lie.”

What the hell? He needed out and he needed out now.

“I’m going for coffee. Be back in a bit.”

* * * * *

He hustled down the flights of stairs to Abby’s lab, all the while careful not to knock his cup of joe or her Caf-Pow against the wall or railing. McGee and Ziva’s words kept buzzing around in his brain, an incessant taunting that had him confused and second-guessing both himself and Gibbs. They were just friends. Good friends. _Really_ good friends. And maybe he _liked_ the attention Gibbs had been giving him, and his boss certainly seemed to be reciprocating in kind. So what? It didn’t have to mean anything. It was just like any other friendship with one of his –

Tony came to a screeching halt on the landing, juggling the two beverages in an intricate dance against the forces of gravity and momentum.

It _wasn’t_ just like any other friendship. It never _had_ been. It was more, definitely more. But not more in the way Tim and Ziva were implying, surely? He and Gibbs had never _really_ crossed that line. It had never really even come up, although now (and all too late, apparently), he could see how an onlooker might assume certain things about their relationship.

Whatever. Let them assume. He wasn’t about to let anyone else rain on his newfound closeness with his friend and boss.

And with that, Tony pushed open the door from the stairs to the hallway outside Abby’s lab, and ran straight into the man of the hour.

“Boss!” he startled, bracing his chest outward and raising both beverages up above his head so that they didn’t partake in the collision. Gibbs’ steadying hands on his hips stopped his movement, and Tony smiled gratefully across the few inches between them.

“Thanks!” He lowered his arms, the drink cups finding scarce room between the two of them.

“No problem. You checking in with Abby too?”

Tony felt ridiculously comfortable right there in front of Gibbs, something he wouldn’t have a few short weeks ago, but he soon became hyper-aware of the man’s hands still resting against his sides.

“Uh, yeah, just need to ask her opinion about something. You done in there?” He nodded his head towards the door a few feet away, and noticed a black pigtail disappearing behind the wall.

“Yup. Just heading to chat with Ducky now, and then I’ll be back upstairs. See you in a bit?”

Tony knew it wasn’t like Gibbs to check in with him, but it was exactly the sort of thing they’d become accustomed to doing with each other over the last month. So in a way, it _was_ the sort of thing Gibbs would do, only nobody but Tony knew about it.

And, quite frankly, it was all very quickly giving him a headache.  
“Sure. See you in a bit.” He managed a half-smile, and within a split second realized that Gibbs hadn’t bought it.

Gibbs’ hand was on his shoulder now, a firm grip that softened before fingers moved up to his neck. Tony found himself stifling a shiver as his body reacted to the touch, and then the frustration caught up with him and he let himself do the thing that came most naturally to him – he dropped his head onto Gibbs’ shoulder and let out a massive sigh.

“What’s going on, Tony? Talk to me.” And then there was silence as Gibbs waited, patiently.

“What’s going on?” Tony mumbled against Gibbs’ jacket, revelling in the warmth and the smell of the man. “I have no idea.” He lifted his head up and came eye-to-eye with Gibbs, and forced his gaze to rest there for a few moments in spite of the way his breath seemed to hitch unexpectedly in his chest. He watched as something uncertain flickered across the other man’s blue eyes, and then the elevator door next to them pinged and suddenly Ducky was standing right there, a third wheel witness to a very comfortable but unusual and unexpected moment between the other two men.

“Gentlemen…,” Ducky said, levelling a curious gaze at them, “I had heard rumor but wasn’t quite sure what to believe….”

Gibbs’ head snapped to the side, and he levelled an icy glare at Ducky as his fingers tensed slightly at the nape of Tony’s neck but didn’t move away.

“Rumor?” Gibbs’ voice was low and sharp as a knife, cutting through the air between the three of them so pointedly that Tony found himself flinching. “What _rumor?_ ”

“Well,” Ducky started uncertainly, and then the color rose in his cheeks as he apparently decided that now was the time that words were going to fail him. He ended up gesturing between the two of them and raising his eyebrows suggestively. “That, pretty much.”

Tony took that as his cue to intervene.

“Ducky,” he chuckled, intending to make light of the situation and explain away the intimate scene until Ducky’s politeness forced him to move on. But then he stopped. He stopped laughing, he stopped fake-smiling, and he stopped feeling awkward. This was _Gibbs_ , damn it, and the man and their relationship was worth more than a dismissal that would only serve to fuel the rumor mill.

So he started, anew. Gibbs was looking at him with furrowed eyebrows, and Ducky with raised ones, but he pressed on in a calm and quiet voice.

“Tim and Ziva were on me about this after I straightened your tie this morning,” he admitted to Gibbs. “They think there’s something romantic going on between us. But I swore,” and at this, he turned to Ducky,” that we had simply become a lot closer and more comfortable with each other these past few weeks. We’ve been with each other almost 24/7, except to sleep. Things _have_ changed. Just not like that.”

“Whatever you say,” Ducky muttered under his breath.

“Would you have a _problem_ with that?” Gibbs interrupted, and Tony watched the older man’s cheeks flush again. 

“Jethro, you know I’m as equal opportunity for everybody as you are. But yourself and someone on your team, a subordinate –“

“Tony’s hardly a subordinate, Ducky.”

“You know what I mean,” Ducky implored. “What you two do or don’t do behind closed doors is your own business, but mixing business with pleasure is playing with fire. I once had a friend, a fellow doctor on the front lines who fell for –“

“Can I just point out _again_ that there’s nothing _going on_ behind closed doors,” Tony exclaimed, finally having had enough of the back-and-forth. “This Caf-Pow is losing its cool and so am I, so I’m gonna go see Abby, okay?”

He gently shrugged out of Gibbs’ grasp and, with an apologetic look backwards, headed around the corner and into Abby’s lab. Her music was suspiciously absent, and she was standing in front of Major Mass spec and sucking hard on a lollipop... just about as close as she could get to the lab’s door while still being in the lab. Tony knew he’d seen her pigtails disappearing earlier and wondered how much she’d heard.

“Hey Abbs!” he greeted, going for jovial but sounding more like a vacuum that had just been turned off and was losing air.

She looked up at him as he came to a stop next to her, levelled her gaze with his, and pulled the lollipop out of her mouth with an extra loud popping sound. And then she waited, expectantly, giving Tony nothing to go on. No smile, no frown, just a searching gaze that seemed to sear the depths of his soul.

He actually backed up a step, out of some sense of self-preservation.

“What?” His laughed word ended up being more of a croak, but that was okay because he didn’t give a flying frak anymore.

He tried again. “I swear there’s –”

“ _Firstly_ ,” she announced, taking a step forward and into his space, “I fully support the two of you getting it on. Secondly,” she kept going, holding up a finger to silence him as he tried to edge a word in, “if either of you intentionally hurt each other I’ll become your worst nightmare.”

Tony stood there, not knowing quite what to say. He knew she’d heard the conversation between him and Gibbs, and between them and Ducky, and he really had nothing left to add to his honest denials except for the jittery feeling in his gut whenever he thought of the way Gibbs’ fingers had rested on him only a few minutes before.

“That’s all,” Abby said, and then she smiled at him. “So, is that for me?” And she stuck her hand out and waited for him to pass the Caf-Pow across to her.

He handed it over slowly, a slight tilt to his head as he considered the woman in front of him. As much as her excitable exterior made him want to _deny deny deny_ and walk away, the wise and thoughtful longtime friend that was lurking just beneath that surface was a much stronger draw. Especially in this case.

“I need your help,” he admitted, visibly deflating from the built-up tension but feeling a whole lot better in doing so.

“Of course you do,” she smiled at him, turning around and leading him into her office. She patted a chair near the door, obviously intending for him to sit there, and then she dropped herself down into her own desk chair in a surprisingly dainty way, given her cumbersome shoes. “Okay, so what’s the deal?”

She still looked ridiculously excited, but there was a whole lot more genuine curiosity and concern on her face now. Tony took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

“You hear it all, right?” he clarified, not doubting her eavesdropping skills for a moment but needing her to admit it. She nodded carefully, then raised her eyebrows at him in encouragement as if to say _go on._

“Okay, let me lay it out for you,” he started, breathing in deeply again as he tried to slow his mind and his pulse, which seemed to have fired up at the thought of talking about Gibbs. “Gibbs and I, we grew close on our assignment but nothing happened. I swear.”

“Did you want something to?” she chimed in, a mischievous smile lighting her face.

“No. Not really. I mean, it didn’t even cross my mind. Not in that way… I mean, I was kind of high on getting all that time with him, getting to really _know_ him, but that was all.”

“Friendship running deeper….” Abby observed, the smile still there. “Okay, then what?”

“This morning, when I saw him, we were all up close and personal as we’ve become accustomed to, and Tim and Ziva were all over me for it. But you probably already know that part,” he hinted, knowing how fast that sort of news would have made its way to the Forensic Lab. “And then what you saw, and heard… I think something sparked there.”

There it was – out. 

But his mouth kept going. “I think it happened for both of us. And the way he defended even the _possibility_ of it to Ducky….” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “Damn, I’m confused.”

He watched as one of her large platform boots tapped against the floor in front of him for a minute before she spoke.

“You need to talk with him about this, not with me. If you’re as close as you say you are, then trust him with this and trust that you guys will be okay either way.”

* * * * *

An hour later, Tony was no closer to reading through the stack of reports on his desk than he had been at the beginning of the day. He couldn’t help but look surreptitiously across at Gibbs’ desk every few minutes, wondering what the man thought about their whole interaction earlier. He wondered if he was the only one pre-occupied with it, and as a shadow fell across his desk he gave up on reading the first paragraph on the file for the umpteenth time. 

The smile faded from his lips as he looked up to find Gibbs looking down at him.

“DiNozzo, with me,” Gibbs said quietly, before he turned and strode towards the elevator. Tony was up immediately, an unfamiliar nervous energy reverberating through his body as he followed his boss. He chanced a look back towards Tim and Ziva on the way, and the smirks on their faces pushed at every instinct he had to give them both the middle finger. 

But then he was in the elevator, and the doors were closing, and he was in what seemed to be an ever-shrinking small gray box with _Jethro_ , who was _right there_ , and then the man was flipping the emergency stop switch and bringing himself chest to chest with Tony.

“Why do I feel so nervous here with you?” Tony blurted out, and then, ”Damn!” followed out of his mouth a second later.

He couldn’t possibly look his boss, his friend in the eye so he settled on watching the corner of the other man’s mouth which was threatening to curl up into a smile. And then he realized that was perhaps an even worse place to focus on, given their current situation, so he finally looked up.

“What’s going on?” Gibbs asked, his calm and patient tone at odds with the ready-to-burst tension that Tony felt. “You’ve been looking at me almost non-stop for the last hour. Tim and Ziva are gonna have a field day with that.”

Tony watched as Gibbs’ smiled widened, and some of his tension melted away along with it as he smiled back. This was his _friend_. He could do this.

“What you said to Ducky earlier,” Tony wondered out loud, “did you mean it?”

The smile on Gibbs’ face faltered somewhat as concern flicked across his eyes. 

“I meant it,” he answered after a pause. Then he seemed to consider his next words carefully. “I wouldn’t have a problem with that.” His eyes dropped for a second, out of guilt or embarrassment or insecurity, Tony wasn’t sure. 

Then Tony spotted the little patch of dust at the shoulder of Gibbs’ jacket, and his fingers started to itch. He closed his hands into fists, willing away the desire to brush at the spot… for now. Gibbs was admitting to something here, he was sure of it. But he wasn’t quite so sure of how sure _he_ was about the idea of the whole thing. It had, after all, been a grand total of an hour and a half since his revelation near Abby’s lab.

Although, if the frantic pulse rushing through his body and throbbing in places he’d rather it didn’t right now was anything to go by, _parts_ of him were in definite agreement.

He brushed at the dust, inhaling the sharp, clean smell of Gibbs as he leaned in closer to do so. And as he did he felt that fire spark again, catching hold of the tinder in his soul and quickly igniting it into a full-on flame because he didn’t rein it back in. 

“Shit,” he whispered, pausing with his face cheek-to-cheek with Gibbs’.

“You okay?” Gibbs voice was quiet and low, his breath caressing Tony’s ear in a way that sent an involuntary shiver down his spine.

“No,” Tony admitted slowly, “because I can’t believe Tim and Ziva picked up on this before I did. So that was actual _flirting_ when we were on assignment, all the unusual-for-you touchy-feely stuff?”

“I wouldn’t have chanced anything like that otherwise.”

He drew back a few inches, let his gaze wander over the landscape of Gibbs’ face so close to his – the crease of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the dry lips that seemed frozen a few millimeters apart from each other, the long ridge of his nose, and the sparkling blue above it that drew him back in.

The realization that _this was it_ flashed through his mind in sudden and searing certainty and, although his pulse was still racing like never before, an eerie sort of peace descended over him. He let his lips touch Gibbs’, hesitantly, testing and tasting as his heart pounded in his chest. They were dry but warm, and surprisingly soft as the older man pressed gently toward him in return.

Desire reared its head in full force then, the innate need to _possess_ and _own_ crowding out any other sort of judgement or logical thought as Tony fairly shoved Gibbs backwards against the elevator wall and licked against the man’s lower lip with his tongue. Gibbs’ lips fell apart instantly, eagerly moulding to Tony’s as the kiss deepened and quickly grew feverish.

Tony felt an arm snake around his back, pulling him in closer, and he let himself be guided as his upper body then legs and eventually his groin made full-on contact with Gibbs. The gasp that escaped his lips would have been embarrassing with anyone else, but he simply didn’t give a fuck because this was Gibbs, and Gibbs’ erection against his through the soft material of their pants, and Gibbs moaning Tony’s name in return, and what _was_ that voice doing suddenly talking to them through the speaker in the wall?

“This is Steve from Security,” the monotone voice sounded out. “We have an alert on the system showing that this elevator has been stopped for more than two minutes between floors. Do you need assistance?”

 _Assistance getting Gibbs’ pants unzipped_ floated briefly across Tony’s mind, as he reluctantly pulled back and adjusted himself with one hand while still holding onto Gibbs with the other. His eyes met and held with Gibbs’ blue ones, and Tony cleared his throat as quietly as he could while the corner of Gibbs’ mouth curled into a satisfied smirk. 

“This is Special Agent Gibbs. Everything’s fine here, Steve,” Gibbs announced, not letting his eyes stray from Tony’s. “I’ll get it going again right away.” He made no mention that there was someone else in the elevator with him, and gave no explanation for any of the noises that Steve might have heard when he first activated the two-way speaker.

Tony turned so that he could flick the switch to re-start the elevator, and noted that there was a little red light on right below the speaker. Gibbs indicated that he’d noticed it too, and they made the rest of their journey down to the first floor in silence, staring at the doors.

The elevator doors opened, and the little red light went off. 

No fewer than five people were waiting right outside, one lady anxiously tapping her foot and another man looking pointedly at his watch. Gibbs gave them all a chilling glare and leaned past Tony to push the button for the Bullpen, followed quickly by some insistent pressing on the “close doors” button.

“My place after work?” Gibbs asked, hesitantly resting his hand on Tony’s lower back as the elevator made the short trip up again.

Tony leaned into the touch slightly, and smiled. 

“Hell yeah.”


End file.
